Canadian Woman Uses METALLICA Music To Fend Off Cougar

A Canadian woman used METALLICA's music to scare off a cougar while walking her dog last week.

Dee Gallant and her husky Murphy were out for their usual evening stroll on a logging road just outside of Duncan, British Columbia when she said she felt "like something was watching" them.

"I looked over to the right and there it was," she recalled to KelownaNow. "I couldn't make it out at first and thought, 'Oh, that is a strange color. That's not a tree.'"

After realizing what it was, Gallant "stopped and looked at him and he didn't stop," she told Victoria News. "I looked at him and said, 'Hey, you, stop it,' and he stopped. That's when I started filming."

Gallant can be heard on the video yelling out instructions to make the cougar go away: "Get out of here," "Bad kitty," and "I'll fight you."

"It didn't respond to that either," Gallant said. "It just stayed locked on to me and seemed really interested, so that is when I decided to stop recording and try to do something else… I quickly rifled through my iTunes and found METALLICA 'Don't Tread On Me'," she explained. "I thought it was the noisiest thing on my phone that would probably scare it. That was also the message I wanted to convey to the cougar... As soon as it started to play, he buggered off into the bush.

"I guess he didn't want to eat anything that leaves a METALLICA taste in his mouth," Gallant joked.

Gallant credits METALLICA's music with sparing her a possibly unpleasant encounter with the big cat.

"I would love to contact them someday and tell James Hetfield that he saved my life," she laughed.